bloodygranuaile

I can’t remember where I picked up my copy of Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools, but I have been hearing good things about it from my fellow editors for several years. I think I got it off another editor, but regrettably I can’t remember who.

Anyway, Writing Tools lives up to the hype. It would be worth the price of the whole book just for the bits on the ladder of abstraction, which gives a nice concise framework to a particular type of dull writing I run into all the time, thus allowing easier pinpointing of what is wrong with it. (How to fix it still may often require more time than I’m given, but whatever.) Some of the tools are on the “nuts and bolts” of writing–word choice and sentence structure and all–and others are more about organization and process. There are exercise questions for the reader to practice applying these tools, which I did not do but which seemed like very useful homework assignments, and possibly I should go do them at some point. Overall a very solid little book; a classic for a reason.

For some inexplicable reason I agreed to give a presentation on technical editing at work, which immediately ran into a number of issues such as “I hate using PowerPoint” and “I am incapable of doing public speaking seriously” and “The only public speakings I have done in years have been about socialism so God knows what jokes I’ll end up making if I don’t plan them out in advance, or even if I do.” But anyway, I did it, and in preparation I started finally poking about a bit more in my pile o’ editing books that I had rather meant to start reading during unemployment so I didn’t lose all my professional skills but hadn’t touched because I wound up spending all of my unemployment time doing socialism instead. Anyway, the first one I picked up and began reading properly was Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, which I had picked up at an ACES conference when it was first published two years ago. Dreyer’s English kicks off with a Marie Kondo joke, which seemed to me a good sign; I included three Marie Kondo jokes in my own presentation, so it’s nice to be in illustrious company, although it is possible that I overdid it.

Alright, we're gonna set a goal of 5,000 words for September, which is what the monthly goals were last time I had goals. Let's see if I can remember how to words.

One of my New Year's resolutions this year is to write 10,000 words per month.






The ideal breakdown here is one thousand words per day for the first ten days of every month, and the last twenty or so days off to outline, plan, revise, cogitate, or do other things entirely. We'll see how that goes.

In my Classics book club, we are continuing our theme of reading works derived from other classics (a theme I am beginning to tire of, honestly). First there was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which was quite amazing; then, some short stories about Kafka, by Haruki Murakami and Lydia Davis. This time around, we are reading Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes.

First off, my enjoyment of this book is likely severely compromised by my not having read any of Flaubert’s novels. I certainly want to read Flaubert’s novels, now, especially Madame Bovary, although to be honest, what I know of it now makes it sound suspiciously like Fantine’s plotline in Les Miserables, or any of another dozen works written by white dudes about fallen women which have gotten themselves classed as Great Literature. Although the ones I’ve read are usually pretty good; I suppose there’s probably a couple hundred or thousand other books written by white dudes in the nineteenth century about fallen women which have not gotten classed as Great Literature, and perhaps those are the bad ones.

This is a thoroughly postmodern novel—or at least, it is a postmodern book; whether or not it is a novel is somewhat debatable. Technically it fits the definition of being a long-form work of prose fiction, although the chapters only loosely flow together into an kind of storyline, so one could well make the cases that it is more of a short story collection—several short works of prose fiction, all roughly about Flaubert or about doctor and amateur historian Geoffrey Braithewaite’s obsession with Flaubert and attempt to find the parrot he kept on his desk when writing Un Coeur simple. The book was often funny, although I often found myself not particularly liking Braithwaite as a narrator; he seemed trying a bit too hard to ape his hero Flaubert’s chronic pessimism, and to be honest, if I want to hear some dude going on resolutely shitting on every single thing anyone says at great length and with a defensive air of superiority, there are like fifty million nerd events in the Boston area I could be attending at any given time. Much of Braithwaite’s narration is also written in second person, but, since the character of the man he is talking to is not well developed (which is an absolute must for second person writing, I think) I ended up feeling fairly defensive myself; like, dude, I haven’t said anything, stop trying to debunk the stupid opinions I never expressed. Also, stop misgendering me.

Due to the loose structure it’s hard to judge this book as a whole: some chapters were quite well-done and others seemed pointless and rambly; some were stories and some were listicles; some were about Flaubert and others were about other people. I think the chapter from Louise Colet’s point of view was excellent; the chapter about why Braithewaite hates critics (it is because of exactly one dumb thing that exactly one critic said, apparently) is mostly just grating. The stuff about the quest for the parrot really was quite interesting; Braithewaite’s amateur detective work brings us into a bunch of museums and through a lot of historical records and that sort of thing.

Overall this was not a bad book, but I was a bit disappointed with it; I think probably because I didn’t have quite the background knowledge to really appreciate it, but also I think it was just one of those times where it wasn’t really what I wanted to be reading—and I have been most fabulously busy lately, so having it on my to-do list (“…and I have to find time to read this damn book before the meeting!”) meant I approached it with less than a relaxed mindset.

Recommended for people who have read some Flaubert and are not in a big hurry.

Last weekend I went to Readercon, the speculative fiction convention in Burlington, MA. This was my first literary convention, and only the second con I’ve ever attended (the other was Wicked Faire, which I am pretty sure counts as a con). I went with a couple of the people from my writing/critique group. Gillian and Lura and I split a hotel room for Friday and Saturday night. (I was unable to attend the Thursday night opening remarks/panels as I had to work late to make up for taking Friday off.)

Friday morning I got up entirely too early out of sheer excitement, then spent four hours impatiently cleaning the house, visiting death and destruction upon carpenter ants, drinking iced coffee (this is a great idea when you’re already keyed up and impatient!), going to the liquor store (priorities, I haz them), and other mundane acts of not being at Readercon yet. Finally it was time to pick up Gillian, head down to South Station to pick up Tim and Mark (one of Gillian’s Clarion friends and his husband), head to Burlington, and check in. We got to the Marriot a little before noon, so it was already full of people in their best non-costume nerd finery (I met C.S.E. Cooney, who was definitely pushing the boundaries of “non-costume,” but as a former wearer of Renaissance skirts and hooker boots to school, I wholeheartedly approve). We got our badges and Gillian introduced me to like twenty people because apparently she knows everybody. Then the real fun began!

We got in about halfway through the 12:00 “Of Gods and Goddesses” panel. Coming in mid-conversation always means that it takes a little bit to figure out what’s going on, but we did catch some very interesting conversations about making up (or trying to make up) new gods and goddesses versus using deities from existing pantheons, the relationship between Christian mythology and pagan mythologies in fantasy stories and some of the worst trends therein, and religious traditions that are underrepresented and under-reimagined in fantasy. Patricia McKillip admitted to having been complimented on a fantasy pantheon that she had completely forgotten she'd written. My recommendation notes for this panel were N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and Patricia McKillip's The Sorceress and the Cygnet.

After that we kicked around exploring and being social for another hour, and I met the two other B-spec members who would be around for the whole con, Lura and Emily. (I am fairly new to my writing group so there are several members I haven't met yet.)

At two we attended the panel on "Expressions of Disability in Speculative Fiction," which discussed common shitty tropes about disability and why they are shitty, mostly focusing on the "culture of cure" and the particularly common trope of using technology or magic to get rid of disability. They also vetted the portrayals of some disabled characters in popular SF/F (Bran: awesome, Hodor: not so awesome). One of the panelists pointed out that technological advances were likely to have their own issues with disability--interacting with them poorly, changing the expectations for "fully abled," etc--and that access to disability-aid technologies is not automatically going to be equally accessible in the future. There was also a short discussion of ageing in fiction towards the end of the panel.

At three we attended the "Characters who Break the Binary" panel, which discussed the dearth of good portrayals of characters who were neither entirely gay nor straight, or who are not entirely cisgendered. This was the first of several panels I saw where Alaya Dawn Johnson was a panelist, and therefore the first in which I resolved that I have to read her entire backlist, stat. Steve Berman talked a bit about trends in the stories that come into Lethe Press (genderqueer is very big right now), and the way that nonbinary identities are named and framed at different places and points in time.

At four we attended "Race as a Social Construct in Speculative Fiction," a panel that Gillian had suggested (the story is that she suggested it at 3 am after an argument about racism with someone on Twitter, and was shocked that they actually used it). I say this in the interest of full disclosure, so you know I have some reason to be biased when I proclaim that this was a particularly excellent panel with especially smart and awesome speakers, including Alaya Dawn Johnson again, and John Chu, who is apparently a friend of Gillian's. This panel was led by Andrea Hairston, who is a Theater Person as well as an author, and you can tell, because she is super engaging and funny and has an amazing stage presence. (Also, she had an awesome hat.) The panelists dissected some of the failier ways in which some sci-fi/fantasy (mostly sci-fi) works have tried to depict allegorical or analogous stories about racism, often using what are markedly different species. They then moved on to the challenges of depicting characters of different races in their own works without being so blatant as to be weird and stereotypical but without being so subtle so that readers would miss it (I gathered that this is a bigger issue in shorter works but I don't think anyone explicitly claimed that at any point); they also discussed the related opposite problem of running into characters that are explicitly labeled as ethnic minorities but who are characterized in ways that seem to lack any sort of awareness of how that might actually lead to having experiences that would shape their characterization. (I believe someone--I want to say Daniel Jose Older--brought up Will Smith characters running at cops with guns, which no grown-up Black man in America would expect to get away with.) Most of the panel focused on science fiction; I would have been interested to hear more about the racial essentialism issues embedded in the Tolkien-derivative fantasy tradition but we ran out of time before I could figure out how to word that as a specific question.

I don’t remember what book was recommended at what panel but my rec notes for this block of sociological panels has: Ascension, by Jacqueline Koyanagi; The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson; and anything by Andrea Hairston.

This was enough seriousness for one afternoon, so then we went to a panel called “Writing (Hot and Heavy) Action,” which was about writing sex scenes and fight scenes. Predictably, the room was packed. I was mildly terrified of this panel, to be honest. The panel turned out to be great—both utterly hilarious and full of really good writing advice—but I am now mildly terrified of Margo Lanagan. There was also a hilarious line of discussion revealing that many science fiction writers used to make ends meet by writing letters for Penthouse. Who knew?

After this we went out for dinner, and we went to a sit-down restaurant, which was quite fun, but which I will remember not to do again for next year because it took two and a half hours (I do not know it managed to take quite that long) and therefore I missed the panel on clothing and fairy tales that I wanted to attend. Boo.

When we returned to the con we saw a performance by the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, which was just as awesome as their name. Some of the performance was music—there was a particularly good song in the style of a plaintive Irish ballad, except it involved airships—and some of it was spoken word storytelling. There was a very dramatic and exciting story about a bone shark, which would have had slightly more impact were this not the day after the Sharknado premiere.

After this it was party time! After having some Kraken rum in our room (apparently this is, like, the unofficial drink of Readercon or something; I didn’t even know, I just bought it because it’s awesome), we went to the Meet the Prose party. There was a game going on at this party where all the authors had sheets of stickers with the first line of one of their works on them. The goal was to collect all the stickers, thereby meeting all the authors. We did not do this game as we showed up a bit late, but we had a good time talking to all sorts of fancy people anyway. Theodora Goss told us a bit about her current WIP, a novel based on her short story “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter.” I also had a fascinating conversation with a woman who introduced herself only as Nightwing, who quit her job as a software engineer and now sells corsets (I started talking to her because she was wearing an awesome one). After several great conversations and a couple of drinks, it was time to go to bed, because the panels started at 9 am the next morning.

The Saturday 9 am panel that I attended was called “The Work-Work Balance” and it was about the costs of pursuing a career in the arts—basically how to not starve to death in the many years it takes to produce and sell enough stuff to live on, and without letting your day job take you away from writing. There was a lot of complaining and some very good advice. The advice I think I personally would find the most helpful is to schedule a specific block of time to write each week, so that the  back of your brain will sort of plan for it. I like this advice better than “write a little each day”, because I am bad at writing in small blocks.

A lot of the panel was also about managing finances: be okay with having a smaller house, etc. When you do have the opportunity to make money, set some of it aside for later. Most of this was stuff I already kind of knew, but it was good to remind myself of it since I have been rather spendy of late.

Then we took an hour to kick around the book fair, where my resolution to spend less money promptly died (it was a quick and painless death). Gillian introduced me to the chief editor of Clarkesworld, and I could not resist buying three magazines and also spending several minutes admiring the cover art. I bought a couple of books of short stories. I was in word nerd heaven.

11 o’clock was the panel “A Visit from the ‘Suck Fairy,’” about enjoying works with problematic elements. The general consensus was that it is okay to enjoy books that have some sort of faily thing going on as long as you own it, and don’t get all denial-y and try to pretend that Lovecraft was totally not racist, for example. They talked a bit about where they each draw the line on what they can and cannot stand to read or have in their house, and how frequently authors are excused as “products of their time” even when this is not actually true. Yoon Ha Lee talked a bit about how when he was younger, some of his favorite books included some classic sci-fi works (I cannot remember the author’s name) that dealt with gender-swapping in what he now recognizes as a hugely faily way, but at the time, was pretty much the closest thing to a representation of trans-ness as he could find in books.

At noon was the “Friendship is Magic” panel, which was about friendship in speculative fiction and in fiction in general, and, more importantly, about the lack of depictions of friendship, even considering that there’s clearly a market for it because some of the most successful story franchises ever have been buddy stories (Sam and Frodo, Holmes and Watson). Some of the panelists discussed how they represent friendships in their own works, particularly female friendships, which are even harder to find in mainstream works than male ones (although perhaps not quite as hard as cross-sex friendships). They also discussed the trope that villians never have friends, only minions—a particularly absurd notion considering that in the real world, assholes have friends all the time (frequently other assholes, but still). Most of the panel discussed the importance of friendship and community versus the American value of individualism and making your own way. In the only question I ventured for the entire con, I asked about friendship versus romance—the idea that romantic and sexual relationships are the only sort of relationships that “count,” which seems to be at least as much of a popular idea as not relying on other people.

At one o’clock I (by myself now) went to Romie Stott’s talk “Economic Systems Past, Present, and Future.” This had a little bit less to do with developing economic systems in writing than I sort of assumed it would; I forget sometimes that I actually do know a little more than nothing about economics and money, so I think the purpose of the talk was more like “Here the basic things you need to know about real money, so that you can avoid saying egregiously stupid things about it when building worlds.” An extensive part of the talk was about feudalism, possibly the most frequently-misunderstood-but-used-anyway system in fantasy; some of the rest of it addressed basic economic concepts like “What is money, actually?” and comparative advantage (a concept Robert Heinlein apparently did not understand).

After this Gillian and I were scheduled to give blood. The Heinlein Society/Red Cross folks were running a bit behind schedule; so I took another trip to the dealer’s room and bought a copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Giving blood took a while—we had to be given extra water since apparently it’s hard staying properly hydrated in the hot weather, even while stuck inside a freezing cold hotel—and somewhere around the two-minutes-before-the-end mark I started shivering uncontrollably. We fixed this with Chipotle and a nice quiet introvert’s dinner in the hotel room. Then I took a nap. Apparently I really need my blood in order to function.

At six I went back downstairs to attend the panel called “The Tropes of Tresses,” which was about hair in speculative fiction. Yes, there was a whole panel about hair. There was some talk of heroines with wacky-colored hair and how this has become a bit of a “Mary Sue” trope, but there are also some stories that pull it off well (Kristen Cashore’s Fire came up as an example). They also talked about scenes involving hairdressing as a bonding experience, and the various uses of changing one’s hair (usually cutting it off) as a symbol for big changes. They also talked a bit about men’s hair, including facial hair, and what it has meant in different cultures and in different types of stories (shoutout to Khal Drogo’s braid!). Then somebody brought up body hair, and the panel inevitably devolved into an entire room full of people shouting “merkin!” (I have found my people, and they are batshit crazy.)

After this was the Speculative Fiction Open Mic, which was definitely in the “fun and different” camp for me; I don’t read a whole lot of poetry. But this was all fantasy and science fiction poetry! Gillian read her awesome poem “Please Do Not Eat the Children,” which was published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Catherynne Valente read “What the Dragon Said” and I tried not to freak out because Catherynne Valente is awesome and I did not know she was there as she was not on the author list and ahhh fangirling.

Eight o’clock for me was a panel on “The Xanatos Gambit,” which is a particular type of scheme where any of the multiple outcomes all benefit the schemer. The panel was hilarious, due in large part to sheer force of personality on the part of Scott Lynch. The slightly meandering discussion covered everything from the trope of the trickster as a cosmic balancing force versus the schemer as an individual self-interested douche, to famous gambits used in fiction, to how to write schemers non-stupidly. Scott Lynch brought up that a lot of older stories used to feature the character of “the rake,” which is a euphemism for a rapist that you’re trying to pass off as a fun character, and we don’t see as much of that anymore, for good reason. He also mentioned that it’s easy to make characters be smarter than their authors because of the time frame involved in writing and editing; the character and its author both have to come up with the solution to a problem, but the character can seem to come up with it in five seconds whereas in reality it takes the author seventeen months to think of something that cool. Scott Lynch is also of the opinion that hiding information is totally cheating; a good author of cons lays out all the information and the end reveals how they all tie together. (Scott Lynch had a lot of opinions for a one-hour panel; I was quite impressed. It’s hard to have that many opinions in such a short time frame without sounding like a jackass. As someone who likes having opinions, I must study his methods.)

After this it was party time again, woo! Brought the rest of our crack and rum Kraken Rum to a small room party hosted by either one of Gillian’s Clarion friends or a friend of Gillian’s Clarion friends; one of our hosts was an artist, so we ended up looking at a lot of very cool SF/F-themed linoleum-woodblock prints, because woodblock prints are awesome. We briefly attended another party outside the sixth floor elevators that dubbed itself “Occupy Hallway.” Our last and most illustrious party was Bracken MacLeod’s room party, where I met several fancy authors, and made the mistake of making an offhand comment about bras to Elizabeth Bear, which resulted in her making me and Catherynne Valente stand up so she could compare our boobs. It was a very strange evening.

Kicked off Sunday by attending a talk called “Reading the Fantastic” on the program; the full title turned out to be “Reading the Fantasic, or, The Fainting Narrator: A Meander and a Conclusion.” This talk was even more Relevant To My Interests than I thought it was going to be when I decided to attend. Henry Wessells kicked off by asking us how long it had been since we’d all read The Monk, and then basically rambled for an hour about The Monk, common framing devices used in Gothic fiction, delaying tactics used to build atmosphere (the main one being where the narrator faints at key moments), and H.P. Lovecraft. He also read several excerpts from a Gothic novel I haven’t read called The Wild Irish Girl, and some particularly Gothical passages of Lovecraft’s The Shunned House. I hope somebody got a recording or a transcript of the entire talk; it was solid Gothy fabulousness all the way through. I went a bit nuts trying to livetweet it so I would remember stuff.

My ten o’clock panel was “Workshopping as a Lifestyle,” which contained a lot of solid advice on how to determine what works for you in a critique group, stuff to keep in mind when being workshopped, different critique group models, some of the possible pitfalls of workshopping, and what can be gained from workshopping. One of the big takeaways for me was that critiquers go into your work looking for stuff to dislike (not out of malice, just so they can help), but readers generally go into a work wanting to like it.

The panel after this was “Framing the Fantastic,” which may have been one of the nerdiest panels of the entire con; it was about framing devices. I loved this panel, partly because it was full of very specific, technical advice on the craft aspects of storytelling, and partly because I am a dork who loves framing devices. On more than one occasion I have gotten very excited about coming up with cool framing devices before having a story to tell with them. There was also much exciting talk of footnotes (if you’ve ever read anything by Terry Pratchett, or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, you will know that footnotes really can be awesome and this is not just dry ubernerd excitement going on here). I learned what a club story is; or, more precisely, I learned that the name for that particular framing is “club story.”

At noon I went to “Writing for Younger Readers,” which was about middle-grade and YA lit, both of which I still read a lot of. This was basically a fun panel about how children and teens are awesome, enthusiastic, no-bullshit readers, with a lot of discussion about what books affected each of the panelists as children. There was also some discussion of publishers’ expectations/editorial policies about what was allowed in what age level’s fiction, etc. Alaya Dawn Johnson had some particularly hilarious things to say about people’s reactions to some of the stuff she managed to keep in “The Summer Prince.”

After these four rockin’ panels in a row, I was (a) hungry, (b) freezing, and (c) feeling like my brain had run a marathon. I went and had lunch by myself in the hotel restaurant, then sat in the gazebo to thaw out and read before heading to the last panel of the con.

The last panel was “Teen Violence, Teen Sex,” which kicked off with all the authors expressing some form of disagreement with the hand-wringing tone of the panel description (this was validating to me, as I thought I’d imagined the sort of concern-trolly sex-positivity-gone-wrong subtext there due to my own issues). There was a lot of discussion about what “coming of age” actually means, what “sexual awakening” actually means, the problems with framing sexual awakening/the beginning of adulthood as dependent upon sex with another person, and the fact that sexual exploration and romance take up time and energy, which, in certain kinds of high-stakes action-adventure novels like SF/F tend to be (particularly the currently popular dystopian/post-apocalyptic stuff), protagonists may have limited time and energy for that sort of thing. They also discussed how a lot of YA novels do a better job of dealing with the implications of violence and the effects of committing violence than a lot of “adult” books do. All in all, a lot of substantive, thought-provoking stuff about what it means to grow up and find yourself. (Something I am still thinking a lot about, at 25. Maybe this is why I read so much YA.)

Now the con was over, so it was time to say goodbye to people in the hotel bar, head home, and collapse for the remainder of the afternoon.

Once I read the books and short stories I bought and intend to buy, I will be sure to review them at my half-assed reviewing-things LJ!

I am exhausted and working fifty hours a week and haven't hung out with anybody except my roommate in weeks, and I LIKE it.

Commute exhaustion seriously impairing my time/energy to go to the gym, though. Oops.

It really is amazing what liking my work will do, though. I read textbooks all day! And then 7 hours of it doesn't seem like enough "all day" for me (especially since it takes me forever to get there). I keep either staying late (last week I did an extra 5 hours in-office) or taking it home (this week I did an extra 6 hours out-of-office) and I would take more except I have to do ten hours of freelancing each week, too. And I love it. I have been not super great about my own writing projects (I will write for serious next week I SWEAR), but oh well.

Next week I get to house/cat-sit for my Dad's cousin, which coincidentally cuts my commute in half, so I am planning to take a week to really see how the "single cat lady writer" lifestyle fits if I ever make it to the point where I can afford to live alone. You guys, I will be SO PRODUCTIVE. I WILL WRITE ALL THE THINGS. Please throw things at me if I do not.

This is a tripartite post!

Part the First: Stuff that is not actually happening in my life

This means this part of the post is about television.

Season 3 of Dexter was exponentially better than season 2, because Lila wasn't in it, also because Deb's taste in men gets somewhat better with each season (season 3 dude is a drug dealer, but is not a serial killer, or older than her dad, and she doesn't throw over anyone who is actually awesome to be with him). Despite the OMG Pregnancy And Marriage subplot, this season is not about le awesome power of romantic love, and is only about as much about le fucking-you-up power of family, but is very much a Power of Friendship season, which is a type of relationship that has really not had much show time in Dexter so far. Of course, Dexter's BFF winds up being just as frakked up as he is, but cuddly new cupcake-wielding LaGuerta definitely showcases the positive transformative power of having cuddly cupcake-wielding bestest friendses. Rita still awesome, in her soft-spoken cute-little-mommy way, and handles falling headfirst into A Pregnancy Plotline with maturity and grace. I give this season an A for massive personal growth on the part of everyone who doesn't die.

Dollhouse: I don't wanna spoil things for people who haven't seen this week's yet, or who did not know season 2 had started because Fox sucks and seems to be allergic to actually advertising the damn show, but: I think Joss Whedon is a Man on a Mission to get every single cast member of Battlestar Galactica on the show. Tahmoh Penikett's been on it since the beginning, obvs, and the weird cockney lawyer dude was on it sometime in season 1, and then Jamie Bamber was on last week, and this week has another Special BSG Guest. Here's to hoping Tricia Helfer and Katee Sackhoff show up soon!

Also: last week's Dollhouse and this week's Castle totally both used the word "frenemies." Which I had previously heard, like, once, several years ago.

Castle: Last week's fantastic. Really exciting for the upcoming week's. This week was about models, but it was an episode of Castle, which means it'd be fabulous if it were any other cop show and I was thoroughly entertained by watching it, but the moment the mystery was solved I stopped caring about the main plot. Hopefully they won't subject us to multiple "because so-and-so was/I thought (s)he was cheating on me"-motivated murders in a row again, like the beginning of season 1, because even as non-predictable as those plots manage to be when they're still unfolding (this is Castle, after all) they always leave me feeling like That Was Totally Unoriginal, Sheesh.

On the movie front: Today I watched Soylent Green. Some bits of it were surprisingly good, especially compared with how bad some other bits of it were. Overall it was better than I expected.

Unfortunately I am not having much time for reading outside of school. Northanger Abbey awesome, as Austen usually is. Am about halfway through A Long Fatal Love Chase (the NEW Louisa May Alcott book!) and so far it is a hell of a lot better than the front or back covers would have you believe.

Part the Second: In Which I Annoy Everyone I've Ever Met By Being Really Cranky

Mega uber super crackdown on club sports procedure and paperwork this year. Like, they used to be like "handing in your med forms is nice, and here's the deadline for financial stuff" but now they have gotten utterly fascist about it. All forms must be in by Tuesday or they freeze the club! They are sending people to observe us, so that if anything is being done not by the book they will freeze the club! Tuesday we are still on motherfucking break, but the forms still need to be in by five o'clock or they will freeze the club! Grad students cannot practice with us, or they will freeze the club! I asked, what about the loopholes to the grad students policy me and Shay and Shihan discussed with Mike McKenna last year? If we jump through those hoops, can they stay? No answer. I asked, if people want to join and get me their health forms after Tuesday, can they still do that, since karate club often has people join at weird times in the semester? I was told... get all your forms in by Tuesday or we freeze the club! So I'm not sure if that's a yes or a no, but apparently it is very threatening to ask them complicated questions so they needed to threaten me back. Aaargh.

Part the Third: Why I Should Totes Not Be Writing This Entry

It is the holiday weekend and I have a ten-page novel synopsis due next Friday and I had very little plot development in my head, just the premise and ending. So now I am home, in a nice empty house (mom is out of town til tomorrow evening), so that I can actually figure out what the frak happens in my story.

I spent all of today worldbuilding, and outlining my plot mountain (yes, I plan stuff in on a visual of that 'plot mountain' shape they teach you about in sixth grade), and wrote the first page or so of the actual synopsis, in addition to going to the gym and drinking wine (Gnarly Head is on sale at Gary's, whee) and hunting centipedes (ew) and a few other things that were not actually writing. Oops. But I did get some stuff done.

Tomorrow needs to be more productive, though, so I's going to bed now.

Goodnight!

Hm, title prompt. Having a bit of trouble coming up with something at the moment, since my brain's been working in French all day. I have a half-hour Powerpoint/oral presentation on Monday, on immigration from the French Antilles to France since the sixties. Started it this morning. Had to cancel my plans for the evening but somehow managed to bang out the entire first draft tonight. Tomorrow, will see if I can actually present it so it fits all the requirements. You know you're busy when your "study break" is to try and do the homework for a different class.

Frankly, I don't feel all that stressed or upset, for once. Partly because I'm not feeling so sick anymore. Partly because I seem to have emotionally let go of my friends a little, and it no longer upsets me that I'm not seeing them. I wouldn't be good company these days, anyway. I just feel bad for my hausmates; they still have to see me and listen to me bitch when things are loud and dirty.

I do not like being stuck for writing. At all. I know something will come if I let things bounce off each other in my brain enough, but the time before I actually hit on something is always frustrating. There's an impatient part of my brain that goes "You say you're a writer, WRITE SOMETHING already!" and a paranoid part that's afraid I won't come up with something this time.

I may have to allow myself an episode of Battlestar Galactica or something and then sleep on it. Most of my better story ideas have come to me while I'm trying to sleep and can't.